Sleeping and Dreaming

We are fortunate to be able to present in this issue a special section on Sleeping and Dreaming. The first paper was presented by Joyce McDougall at a seminar in a series on “Mind and Life” initiated by His Holiness the Dalai Lama, to which selected scientists, philosophers etc were invited. The seminar was presented as follows:

The intention of Mind and Life IV is to focus on a far more delicate area including the three topics: sleeping, dreaming and dying. We wish to bring to discussion those “marginal states” in which our habitual, reified sense of personal identity is challenged, and in which concomitantly a host of phenomena of great significance for human existence become intensified or are made manifest. Current knowledge about the strictly neuroscientific correlates of sleeping and dreaming will be presented. However, the multi-dimensional nature of these states requires other approaches of research which will be presented as well.

In particular, we wish to draw on the insights of many years of clinical work in the Western tradition of psychoanalysis concerning dreams and their role in neurosis and health. Further, current studies on lucid dreaming will be introduced, together with the relevant practical applications and technological methods that have developed recently in the West. These presentations will be complemented with a description of the unique Tibetan tradition of dream yoga and “Bardo” teachings (on the intermediate state following death and prior to one's next rebirth). Western clinical studies on so-called near-death states will be discussed in connection with the above Tibetan teachings.

Montague Ullman, who has devoted more than twenty years to the developing of a method for “dream appreciation” in groups, answered positively to our wish that he discuss the paper by Joyce McDougall.

We invite our readers to comment on this section, and welcome suggestions on authors and topics for similar sections. We also wish to remind you of the possibility